By Brendan Conway

Is there a turnaround in investors’ view of emerging markets? The flood of money last week into iShares’ emerging-markets ETF says yes.

More than $2.5 billion in fresh inflows arrived for iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), the most heavily traded emerging-markets fund. The next highest single-week tally in data going back to 2008 is also a little more than $2.5 billion — in September 2008, according to BlackRock (BLK).

Money arriving in that size is suggestive of a shift of some sort by institutional investors. If this were smalltime market participants, you’d know it by the calls into “Mad Money with Jim Cramer.”

Institutional investors seem to be interested in higher exposure to China and Korea on the premise that the Federal Reserve’s “tapering” efforts will be modest, an iShares spokeswoman said.

The iShares fund wasn’t the only in emerging markets to see steady money last week. iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF (EWZ) took in more than $470 million and Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets (VWO) got more than $380 million, according to XTF.com.

You can rarely tell the full story of investor sentiment through fund flows. But it’s clear something unusual, and something that looks sentiment-bullish, is going on.

About Focus on Funds

As exchange-traded funds and other investing vehicles have ballooned in number, the task of figuring out what works well and what doesn’t has only gotten harder. Barrons.com’s Focus on Funds looks under the hood of ETFs, mutual funds and hedge funds for overlooked values, actionable ideas and the latest pitfalls for fund investors.

Chris Dieterich has covered the U.S. stock market for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. He is a graduate of Regis University and the Missouri School of Journalism.